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INTRODUCTION

The world is said to have been built on ideas, that which has so far shaped our conception of it. The Western mode of thinking and doing things has evolved through the ages bringing it to where it now stands. The book „Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas that have Shaped our World? by Richard Tarnas aims at producing a

chronological narratives of how ideas and thought have evolved in the Western world through time especially in the history of philosophy and how also these thought and ideas have changed the world and it’s still undergoing some transformation. Tarnas approaches this history from a chronological dimension beginning with the ancient Greek period down to contemporary time. He believes it is the task of every generation to examine the ideas that have helped shaped its understanding of it.

I. THE GREEK WORLD VIEW

The foundation of Greek philosophical thinking was the quest to understand the nature of the cosmos up until the time of the Athenian, the Greek tended to view the world through archetypal forms but a more profound refection about this archetype transformed into an intellectual dimension. The Greeks believed that the universe was ordered by a plurality of timeless essences which underlay concrete reality giving it form and meaning. That is things were always in cosmic opposites (e.g. male and female, good and evil e.t.c.) bringing us to the idea of constant flux and that there could yet be distinguished specific immutable structure or essences that could be enduring and believed to possess an independent reality of their own. It was on this that Plato based his metaphysics and theory of knowledge.

Plato’s perspective now happens to be the starting point and foundation for the evolution of the western mind.

The Archetypal Forms

Platonism as it’s commonly understood revolves around the cardinal doctrine of ideas or forms.

Plato’s conception of form is not actually conceptual abstract thoughts created by the mind but their derivates in concrete reality. Reality possesses a quality and degree of being. For example, to say something is beautiful means that thing possesses a quality of beauty in it. In other words, the/that object of beauty participates in the absolute form of beauty. Some critics of Plato have said they can only see things as they exist not as they are (they can perceive particulars and not ideas) but Plato says a person has to have gotten the notion of idea/forms before actually knowing that which is particular.

Idea and God

Plato’s use of gods and ideas are a bit ambiguous as he tends to use them either interchangeably, metaphorically or literarily. At some point, he presents them as mythical figures and at other as epitomes of ideas. The use of archetypes here are also not farfetched. For example, Eros as used in Plato’s work symposium expresses itself at the physical level of sexual instinct while at other times; it is considered as the philosopher’s passion for intellectual beauty and wisdom and then becomes the ultimate source of all beauty. It could then be said that all Plato tried to do was to resolve the tension between classical Greek minds notion of myth and reason.

The Evolution of the Greek Mind from Homer to Plato

The Mythic Vision

Greek thoughts were not devoid of religion and myths as they played an important role in their background and approach to the universe. The idea that gods played an important role in the life of the human person was brought to the fore by Greek poet and writers as they intended to explain the human conditions based on their ideas and understanding of the gods. Their understanding and notions of the gods was also born out human behavior as perceived by them thereby attributing these features to the gods. Myths for them therefore were a process for interpreting nature and the processes of life as it also helped them in shaping their culture.

The Birth of Philosophy

The Greek vision from myth as a source of explanation was gradually shifting as early as the Sixth Century B.C. in the large and prosperous Ionian city of Miletus situated in the Eastern part of the Greek world on the coast of Asia Minor. The shift also might have been as a result of conflicting mythologies, growing civilization, the Greek polis social organization based on laws rather than arbitrary act could be said to have influenced Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes to seek to want to know what it is that made the universe tick despite its constant changing motions and the primordial substance from which it was made as there was a plurality in their understanding of this natural phenomenon. There was the need to explain the cosmos by means of observation and reason rather than by mythological component. Nature should be explained in terms of nature itself and not something beyond it. Natural empiricism was born and human intelligence grew stronger while the sovereign powers of the gods grew weaker. Parmenides of Elea also approached the problem of the universe just as his predecessors but used language and logic because for him,

“what is is” and “what is not is not.”

This revolutionary thinking therefore brought logic to the fore as a necessary tool for the investigation of reality. Anaxagoras, Empedocles and the atomist tried to reconcile the positions of the naturalist and the rationalist by creating a pluralistic system. Empedocles posited that the four elements

fire, water, air and earth

which were eternal moved together and apart by the primary forces of love and strife while Anaxagoras posited that the universe was constituted by an infinite number of minute, qualitatively different seeds which he considered to be the mind (Nous). The atomist, Leucippus and Democritus who constructed a complex explanation of all phenomena in a purely materialistic term posited that the universe is made up of infinite numbers of atoms which move in a boundless void and their random collision varying combination produced the visible world. Human knowledge for them is simply gotten from the impact of material atoms on the sense meaning that things happen by chance. Pythagoras created a synthesis between religion (myth) and reason. He founded a school and was more interested in the in the forms of phenomena. Their commitment to cultic secrecy made most of their work to be largely unknown. They charted an independent philosophical course structured on myth and mystery religion while advancing scientific discoveries of immense consequence for later Western thought. But the more Greek developed intellectually, the more doubt sets in. Thus quoting Xenophanes “The gods did not reveal, from the beginning, all things to us; but in the course of time, through seeking, man find that which is the better …”

The Greek Enlightenment

The Athenians were at the peak of intellectual and cultural development in Greece as Athens became the center of the Greek world. Philosophers at this time had already created a delicate balance between mythological traditions and the modern secular rationalism. There was also the gradual and continuous shift towards a more humanistic endeavor such as the movement from Aristocracy to Egalitarianism, savagery to civilized culture, old religious belief to uninhabited human reason and endeavor. The Sophist emerged during the latter part of the Fifth Century B.C. and were itinerant teachers. Concerning knowledge, they claim it is subjective and not objective that all a person can know is the content of his/her mind rather than things outside the mind. On the idea of god, they posit that we cannot know if they exist or what form they take because of the shortness of human life while Critias further believes that the gods were an invention of humans to instill fear in them in other that those who would have acted in a evil manner would be constrained or restrained. So for them, the world was best viewed apart from religious prejudices. The sophist mediated the shift from mythology to rationality. They championed a methodological approach to the human person and society thereby bringing about the Greek classical system of education and training which included gymnastics, grammar, rhetoric, poetry,music, mathematics, geography, natural history, astronomy and the physical sciences, history of society and ethics, and philosophy which for them would be standard for producing a well-rounded and educated citizen. The sophist view soon developed into a systematic doubt of human beliefs, the relativity and plasticity of human values and custom, and other issues of the time also added to its challenge. It now seems that the use of human reason had kind of fallen in on itself and everywhere the system seemed to be collapsing and knowledge of rationality seemed to be failing.

Socrates

Socrates entered the philosophical arena at a time when the climate was highly charged as there was tension between ancient Olympian traditions and the vigorous new intellectualism. Upon the end of his life, he had left the Greek mind radically transformed, establishing not only a new method and ideas for the pursuit if truth, but also, in his own person an enduring model and inspiration for all subsequent philosophy. Despite his influence, little is known about Socrates as what we have of him is what is known through Plato. Socrates can be considered as a person imbued with passion for intellectual honesty and moral integrity though his life tends to be full of paradoxical contrast; he was above all a man consumed by the passion for truth. Socrates was more interested in ethics and logic as he found physics and cosmology confusing because for him, they were not morally useful and were riddled with inconsistent theories. He believed that education should lead us to live a good life and therefore set for himself the task of finding a way to knowledge that transcend mere opinion, to inform a morality the transcend mere convention.

On the discourse of the soul, Socrates says a better understanding of the soul and one’s self would lead to happiness because happiness is not the product of physical or external circumstances of wealth, power, reputation, but of living a good life that is good for the soul. In essence, the key to human happiness is the development of a rational moral character. Socrates developed a dialectical form of argument that became fundamental to the character and evolution of the Western mind which is reasoning through rigorous dialogue as a method of investigation intended to expose false belief and elicit truth. His methodology was not universally accepted because it was considered unsettling.

The Platonic Hero

Socrates’ philosophy can be considered as an expression of his personality as he was portrayed by Plato’s dialogue Phaedo, Symposium and The republic which is based on good understanding of the self. These works also shows that the human mind can discover and know timeless universals through the supreme discipline of philosophy. In a sense, the Socrates of Plato is a combination of both mythic deities and the development of human intellect to arrive at truth. The human intellect coupled with divine faculty now becomes a prerogative of both the great and humble.

Socrates and Plato’s search for clarity, order and meaning had gone a full circle bringing about an intellectual restoration. Thus Plato gave a new significance to the old archetypal vision of the ancient Greek sensibility.

Socrates is taken as the paradigmatic figure of Greek philosophy but is difficult to separate his thought from that of Plato as it was in Plato that Socrates thought fully came to be known and developed. Socrates methodology became the foundation for Plato’s broader enunciation of the major outlines and problems for subsequent Western philosophy in all its diverse areas. Socrates was not just used as a mouth piece by Plato to complete his own independent ideas but his relationship to Socrates appears complicated. Socrates duty as an intellectual mid-wife could perhaps have found its final and fullest fruit of fulfillment in Platonic philosophy.

(Courtesy of Hanz Bolen, H.W., M.)